Okay, let's talk about the woes of humans who stereotype each other based on gender.

It is a sad but unavoidable fact that penises, vulvas, and mammary glands, and the remarkable electricity that gets generated about them, have caused more confusion, melodrama, and bullshit throughout our history than any other single aspect of human existence.

One side effect of this tomfoolery on parts is that a huge legacy of jokes on all those topics has developed, from the earliest days of Chaucer on forward.

There may well be as many jokes about male parts, and male stupidity, as there are about female ones.

Now consider the fact that 99.9 per cent of the human race belongs to one of these camps or the other, or perhaps even both, there is a very low probability that you will be able to avoid running into some sort of generic humor that is about your personal parts. In other words, I have to put up with a lot of dick jokes, and men are beasts jokes, and the stupidity of people with dangly bits jokes. And other people have to put up with a lot of jokes about other parts.

If I were to take these things personally, I would be a double-idiot.

In general people do LESS stereotyping the more discriminating and intelligent they get. MORE discrimination between things that are actually different, even if somewhat similar, is a key symptom of intelligence, as well as maturity. So the kind of "blind stereotyping" of people by their gender which some have found so "offending" is (when it actually happens) likely to be a sign of stupidity. However, the sauce for the gander applies -- it is also stupid to identify relatively innocent humor with the bogies of 'male chauvinist pig-ism' because someone makes a reference to a body part.
Parts is parts, folks, to quote a famous poet. Get used to it, because it is not going to change. No matter hopw electrical those parts may get, it makes very little sense to invest yourself in melodrama on their account. If you have nothing better to worry about, best review your assumptions.

Finally, the same principle of intelligent discrimination also applies to the decision to take offense. Make no mistake, it is a decision. If you exercise your right to be offended, based on associating ANY reference to your penis or vulva with ALL sexual bias and stupidity, then I am very sorry but you are being just as mindless as those you are accusing. I would think we could find more important, meaningful, or productive things to be offended by than that. Things that too often do not get mentioned at all, like the perfidious corrosion of spiritual values in modern media.

There ya go, pal -- your issue has been addressed.

Refer to earlier instructions of 13-Aug-02 - 04:08 PM. I'm unsubscribing from any more of this wankery.

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